In another room, she sold charms of different sorts and jewelry that wasn’t magikal at all. A different room contained potions, tinctures, poultices, and other items for healing and preservation of health, and then there was the room with herbs, medicinal plants, and raw ingredients that she supplied to other witches. Her workshop and laboratory were at the very rear of the building.
There were two greenhouses—one on the roof and one in the back of the building. She hadn’t told me which one had the pump problem, so I started with the roof. I took the stairs past the second floor and emerged on the roof.
The view of the harbor was breathtaking, and we often sat out there in nice weather, enjoying a drink and watching the sunset. It was a good place to tourist-watch as well.
I walked around the greenhouse, listening for ‘funny noises’ but didn’t hear anything unusual. I went inside and checked out the two pumps—one for the irrigation system, the other for the air conditioning—but wasn’t able to make either one misbehave.
There were two sets of stairs to the roof—the one I came up on the inside of the store, and one in the back on the outside of the building. I took that one down and met Kirsten coming out the back door.
“I take it the bad pump is in this greenhouse?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered. “It goes dubomp-dubomp-dubomp when it starts up and when it turns off.”
“I can see where that might be a problem. Is there a particular tune you would rather that it played?”
“A quiet, humming one, like it used to.”
I determined that the irrigation pump had a bad bearing, and both the drive shaft and the impeller needed replacing.
“You need to order some parts,” I told her, writing down the descriptions and part numbers. “I can spell the bad pump so that it works until we get the parts in, but don’t wait to order them. That pump has a month or two at best, and then you’ll be wandering around with a watering can.”
I cast a spell on the pump, then we went back inside the store, and I asked, “Sell anything expensive to those mages?”
Her face twisted into a sneer. “Dumb bitches. I swear, mages are the worst, especially the rich ones. No, I don’t sell poisons so you can kill your boyfriend’s lover. My roommate is a cop, and she gets all upset when I help murder people.”
I laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I was. Dani, if we didn’t have any scruples, we could get rich just supplying nastiness for all the petty little feuds the Families engage in when they get bored.”
“We could get dead doing that, too,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. And I’d feel bad if someone died because of me, but sometimes…”
“Keep working on that spell to turn assholes into frogs.”
Kirsten chuckled. “Oh, how I wish.”
“Order those parts, and I’ll see you at home,” I said.
Chapter 12
I was just drying off after a shower when Kirsten got home. While we were getting ready to go out, I told her about Jeri’s offer, and she laughed.
“Motorcycle mama? I’ll have to get you a t-shirt with that on it.”
For me, getting dressed to go out dancing didn’t involve much beyond what I wore to work. I put on some makeup and a fresh shirt. But Kirsten didn’t believe in giving men a chance. If every eye in the place wasn’t tracking her, she felt like a failure. We had known each other for twenty years, and I had never been sure whether she had a hidden insecurity complex or was simply the most competitive woman I’d ever met. Considering the way she ran her business, the latter was a distinct possibility.
We took ourselves out to dinner at Jenny’s, more formally known as the Kitchen Witch Café. Neither of us was hurting for money, and we could have gone to the fanciest place in town, but the food wouldn’t have been as good.
On the inside, the Kitchen Witch looked like an old farmhouse, with checked table cloths and homey pictures on the walls. Jenny didn’t use a compu-menu. The basic comfort foods were always available and listed on signs hanging on the walls. The daily specials, including all the baked goods and desserts, were listed on chalkboards hanging next to the printed menus. That part depended on what ingredients were available that day and Jenny’s mood. Jenny refused to cook anything that had come across the Rift so you had to go elsewhere for truly exotic dishes. For table service, she employed two brownies as waitresses.
It being Baltimore, such things as fresh fish, crab cakes, oysters, and shrimp were always available, along with brussels sprouts and mac-and-cheese in various flavors. And considering the desserts, just walking into the place could add five pounds before you even sat down.
Kirsten and Jenny grew up in the same neighborhood, and she came out of the kitchen to chat a bit after we gave the brownie waitress our orders. I ordered the bouillabaisse, and Kirsten opted for a ribeye steak. We shared an appetizer of clams casino, and for dessert we split a piece of Boston crème pie—one of those things that always made me wonder if it really came from Boston. Since the city was long gone to radioactive hell before I was born, I figured I’d never know.
With the exceptions of Baltimore, Montreal, Wilmington, and Jacksonville, every major harbor city on the east coast had been bombed at least once during the five nuclear wars. Why Baltimore had been overlooked was a mystery, but the Mid-Atlantic Metropolitan Complex stretched from Wilmington down to Northeast Washington, west almost to the Appalachian foothills, and was
